WAHM Forums

Hello,

I was wondering how hard it is to sell on Ebay these days? I run an in-home childcare currently, but still need to bring in more monthly income. Right now, I need to fill two spots in my childcare and until that happens, I REALLY have to find an avenue to bring in more money.

I did some Ebay years ago, but then just stopped because it was taking a lot more of my time than I had anticipated. However, right now I need to do what has to be done.

I have heard that fees have risen and that it is just harder for the "little guy" to sell on there now. Is this true? Would it even be worth my time if I am just wanting to sell a few things from around my house in order to make money? Or should I look elsewhere?

Please share any suggestions or advice that you may have about Ebay nowadays. I greatly appreciate it! Have a wonderful day. : )

Hi,

I'm not an expert on eBay but I did sell for them the last 2 months and made a decent profit, HOWEVER, not REALLY because of the DARN fees! Those fees ate up just a little less than 50% of my profits. I had over 100 items on there and tried to mix (auction and store) to see what helped me save on fees! (insertion fees and final value fees).
Maybe I was doing something wrong who knows, I'm not well versed in ebay, and DEFINITELY not a powerseller. It was a learning experience.

If you end an auction early (which I did a couple times) you STILL have to pay for them.

And unlike Paypal, where they take the fees out automatically, ebay's just builds and builds. I was a little disappointed.

They did send a message out saying they were changing the fees I believe next month making them a little lower.

But you can make a decent profit if you have a niche product that is high in demand. And I would suggest further when pricing the product take into account the fees you'd have to pay and set it aside if possible...or wait til the end of the month and pay one big payment..(ebay won't let you make installment payments)

All in all, ebay does work to bring in income, but for me it was a starting ground and now I will take what I learned and keep most of MY money by making my own site.

I'm sorry if I couldn't be more helpful. Much success to you.

I'm just relying on eBay to support my living for the past few years. Of course it does take a lot of time and effort to develop before you can get a real, stable income. But it's definitely a possible thing you can do for living. Only you'll need to find some good product source rather than just selling old stuff at home if you're really thinking of building it up as a business rather than hobby.

I agree you can do very well with ebay, it does take awhile to develop over time, I have been building my ebay business for 4 years now and sell 90 percent of what I list.

Photos are the key to a successful auction.

Biggest selling tip you'll ever learn: Check completed item search for the items you want to sell to see if it's even worth trying it :)

I sold successfully for 5 years before giving it up in October of last year. You're right, OP, eBay is moving farther away from the "little guys." In fact, rumor has it, they may sell off the auction portion of the company.

I am currently a PowerSeller and a Top Rated Seller on eBay. It CAN be a great place to market IF you have what we call a "niche" product. For some reason eBay has decided it needs to compete with Amazon and has changed a lot to head in that direction. Most of us sellers think that is a huge mistake. Yes the fees are very high and yes it takes a lot of work to not only get your listings up and running but to make sure you fit in the policy guidelines, which are ever changing. If you want to just wholesale things I honestly would not recommend it as eBay is literally flooded with this kind of merchandise.

Then you get into the whole PayPal thing. That in itself can be challenging. They err on the side of the buyer and the seller is often left on the losing side if there is a dispute of any kind. Not to mention they now have new policies which allows them to hold new sellers payments until the buyer leaves feedback or seller can prove delivery. This makes it hard for new sellers of many items as your funds are held so you are out of pocket for shipping expenses until you can prove delivery.

Best I can suggest is search eBay for the items you wish to sell. Then look at the fee tables and fully understand those fees. Add in PayPal fees as well. Just as a guide, I recently sold a bunch of books. By the time the auctions ended, fees and shipping were paid I actually "profited" 5 cents on most of them.

Good luck to you!

Greetings,

From a place that was once mostly 'garage sale' items, now it thrives as a market place ~ the schematics have most certainly changed over the years. Once a Power Seller then moving to ecommerce for a company I used to own (sold in 07), I only tinker on the site now and again.

However my Sister In Law has been feeing the pangs of eBays frequent policy changes and fee hikes.

She was a power seller, until they changed the requirments not permitting items under $1 to be sold in stores (she sells herbs and sold samples for like $0.25 which was a huge % of her business and worked to gain traffic to her store.) When they took this away, she complied with the rules while other ebayers continued breaking the rules and it really ate at her business.

Then the most recent fee hike, lower auctions, raise store fees, her fees DOUBLED from one month to the next. (her store items auto renew each mo) She made NO changes, but found a 100% increase in fees.

The bigger a power seller you are, the lower your fees, so eBay for some reason is working on weeding out the small potatoes and leaving the big boys. Which to me is funny as they make money off of EVERYONE...

If you have a craft, I recommend Etsy.com or Artfire.com as well as self promotion via the web!

I sell heaps on ebay, but the fees are a killer. I mostly sell info products, a few a week but they are low cost buy it now items. ebay is mainly lead collection for me. I also have started listing on TripleClicks ECA Program (http://www.tripleclicks.com/11064976.12/ECA)this week, no sales as yet, but as a "commercial" seller I list everything for free and only pay a commission on products that sell. Risk Free. The network is huge too so I am expecting sales once I get a few more products out there.

I just tried my luck with ebay. I listed three items last week and they all sold. Since it was just stuff I had around the house and wasn't using anymore. I made a profit. I did have the problem with paypal putting a hold on my money for one of the items, but I was lucky and the buyer left positive feedback right away, so my funds were realeased after only a few days as opposed to the 21. I found there fees pretty high, but since I did not purchase the items I sold, I still ended up with a pretty nice profit. If you are just selling items around the house I say it couldn't hurt. If your are going to buy items and try to re-sell, I would keep in mind the fees from both ebay and paypal, plus research the average price of similar items to make sure it is even worth your time. also keep in mind if you use paypal as a form of payment...with new sellers, they may hold your money for up to 21 days unless the buyer leaves positive feedback before then....not all buyers leave feedback...some just forget, or don't realize it is impoirtant to sellers. also, once paypal releases your money it can take another 3-5 days for it to transfer over to your bank account. So if you need quick money I would suggest placing a classified add...having a garage sell, or using craigslist. I've had good results with all.

Good Luck!!

I'm a powerseller on eBay and also have a smaller eBay account. One of our accounts is a niche product and the other is kind of a catchall where we sell old things (cameras, old computers, etc.) and other things that we get on clearance. To make money on eBay it is essential to have decent photo skills and pay attention to your heading and description. Research is also crucial to see if the item is something likely to sell at that point in time. It takes time and patience but I still think eBay is worth it for the huge volume of traffic. The fees are steep (for us it seems to be about 10%) so you always have to factor that in.

The one thing I don't like about Ebay is their high listing fees and their final valuation fee. There is a new option to Ebay that also has an affiliate opportunity. It is called Big Value Depot or BVD for short. They are new and have not yet achieved the number of items Ebay has, but they sure are growing fast. Now they even offer a webstore where you can list a number of items free every month.

Ive been selling on eBay for 7 or 8 yrs now, it cycles. I sell antiques and collectables and do well most of the time, but in order to do well I have to keep the number of active auctions high and add new auctions regularly. A lot of my business is repeat business so I have to always be bringing in new merchandise. It is very time consuming on a large scale and yes the fees DO take a big bite out of the profit margin.

Update to add that I have sold several products at Tripleclicks :)

I'm a small eBay seller. I run about 20 items at a time. I don't sell a ton of stuff but do here and there.

The key for me is ONLY LIST WHEN THE LISTING FEE IS FREE!

You can list up to 100 per month and not pay a listing fee if it's a 7-day auction that starts at 99 cents or less. Then just make sure your shipping cost covers the cost of postage + supplies + fees.

Also take advantage of their listing promotions! Right now they have a promotion where you can list at any start price with no listing fee through July 12 (this is included in the 100 items per month).

So I never pay a listing fee. It'd be nice if I could never pay a final value fee too but I'll take what I can get. :)

As a newbie to internet marketing,I found Ebay very hard to compete with some more experience user, and expensive to sell an make a profit on ebay.

I think Ebay is worth a try, but I'm a former powerseller who was put out of business after all the major changes in 2008 (I had about 10 different accounts, but I would consider myself a level 4 powerseller, not as large as the 10's). After that, Ebay's visitor base declined by about 30%. I was watching them on Alexa, while comparing their traffic to Craigslist. That year was the first time Craigslist matched them in visitor traffic.Ebay tried to blame it on the economy, but Craigslist just kept gaining visitors after that. All the changes they made forced lots of sellers to leave, and when they left, all their items listed left too. So Ebay lost a lot of rankings in Google as a result. The largest powersellers did better, because the new system puts them to the front of the line in search results on ebay. If you list an item and it's ending in 24 hours, it may not even appear on the first page of search results until the last hour or so, because powersellers who have items ending in 8 days may be taking up all the slots on the first page. The little guys have less of a chance of succeeding on there. If you look at the completed listings for most of the items on there, you will see it's very hard to sell now and make a decent profit. The fees are pretty steep now as well. Some people have found a niche, and if you can do that, then you may have lots of success on there, even as a little guy. But those people are far and few between. I still sell on there, but I only make about 10% of what I used to and it's probably my smallest source of income from the web. It used to be my main source of income about 2 years ago.

My advice is to give them a try. Just don't build your primary business on there or put too much stock in them. They can't be trusted and can put you out of business overnight with the slightest changes. While trying to sell on there, you should setup your own website and learn about Search Engine Optimization. It may take a little while, but once you have lots of visitors, it will be better than Ebay. Just make a professional looking website so people trust buying from it, or hire someone to do it for you. Use Youtube and resources like that for extra promotion.

Here is a online calculator that will tell you the exact fees for paypal and ebay. You can figure out what you want to sell something for and input the info and it will give you the paypal fee, ebay fee and your profit so you can see if its even worth trying to sell. Ebay Calculator (http://www.newlifeauctions.com/calc.html)